Blogger-turned-writer doodles about unrequited lizard love

With the title of the first chapter, Man Bites Dog, in Amit Varma's debut novel, My Friend Sancho, one is anesthetised to the novel as a man-at-work project, unclear where it is headed, like the Belgian student filmmakers who made the cult film (Man Bites Dog) which though unwittingly was headed into cine heaven.

While borrowing that title from them, as well as Sancho from Don Quixote, there are two things that one needs to bear in mind while reading this book. Amit Varma, thinly veiled as a Subway sandwich enthusiast Abir Ganguly, has forcibly read Cervantes, and will try to type with the speed of a George Simenon, parsing out his largely blank mind.

(Yes, it is possible to speed type vacant thoughts at a rate that should make him look harrowed, had an editor been espying on him from a distance, with a pair of binoculars, and he was sitting motionless and furious at his Remington at a vacant lot.)

My Friend Sancho is not a book spilling from despair or suffering from meaningless but nonetheless florid curlicues. This book is an exercise in doodling passed off as contemporary fiction, from a lack of premise to support an argument in favour of its purpose. Abir Ganguly works on the crime beat for a tabloid where he happens to be working on an article on a shoot-out.

An innocent man is killed. He must meet the daughter of the dead man and through her memories, write a piece on her father; paint a good picture of him, when the cops mistook him for a terrorist and gunned him down. Predictably, he falls in love with her and takes about two weeks to finish the two-bit piece on her father. In exchange, they meet at Infinity Mall, Andheri, browse through books at Landmark, drink perforated cups of mildewed coffee at some stall in the food court and gaze at mottled wedding photographs with a sort of seriousness that would make monocled eye viewing, art.

Abir, when not dreaming of cops and robbers, is seen talking to an icky lizard in his bedroom; the two of them seem to have a long-standing affair on the only other premise in the book that there is nothing else to do in life but stare at the ceiling.

If this is what contemporary Indian fiction has come to, I must confess, that for the irreversible damage the book inflicted on us, we had to spend an entire evening tucked in a corner at Landmark, sailing into Andre Gide's account of Urien's Voyage. Had I, if ever, to introduce myself to Amit Varma's Sancho on the expedition, I would have said, "Call me Ishmael." Almost got him there!

Amit Varma's debut novel, My Friend Sancho was released by Hachette Publication. Available at all leading bookstores for Rs 195